<![CDATA[This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to examine women's language politeness in Facebook status updates. Fewer studies have looked at how politeness functions as a gendered discursive practice in digital communication, despite the fact that it has historically been studied as a pragmatic strategy for reducing face-threatening acts. Drawing on Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory and Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of CDA, this qualitative study analyzes 50 Facebook status updates posted by female users. The findings reveal that women predominantly employ positive politeness, negative politeness, and off-record strategies to maintain social harmony, manage face, and negotiate public self-presentation. At the discursive level, politeness functions as a normative expectation shaping women’s online identities, while at the socio cultural level, it operates as an ideological resource that reproduces gendered norms of emotional labor, relational responsibility, and self-regulation. This study contributes to pragmatics and critical discourse studies by reconceptualizing politeness not merely as an interpersonal strategy but as a socially embedded and ideologically loaded practice in digital discourse. Keywords: politeness, women’s language, Facebook status updates, gender, critical discourse analysis, digital discourse]]>
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